Calder 'Red Nose' Lithograph Bought At Goodwill Worth $9,000

MILWAUKEE -- "Red Nose" just meant a reindeer named Rudolph to Karen Mallet until she bought a print by that name for $12.34 at a Goodwill store in Milwaukee. It turned out to be a lithograph by American artist Alexander Calder worth $9,000.

Mallet's good fortune is at least the fourth time in six months that valuable art has turned up at Goodwill, where bargain-hunters search for hidden treasure among the coffee cups, jewelry, lamps and other household cast-offs.

Last month, a Salvador Dali sketch found at a Goodwill shop in Tacoma, Wash., sold for $21,000. Last summer, a North Carolina woman pocketed more than $27,000 for a painting she bought for $9.99 at Goodwill. And last spring, a dusty jug donated in Buffalo, N.Y., was discovered to be a thousands-of-years-old American Indian artifact – it was returned to its tribe instead of being offered for sale.

When told of the Milwaukee woman's find, a Goodwill spokeswoman said workers at its 2,700 stores try to spot valuables and auction them on the organization's online auction site to net more money for the charitable group. But things slip through the cracks and the workers aren't art experts.

"That's kind of part of shopping at Goodwill – the thrill of the hunt," said Cheryl Lightholder, communications manager for Goodwill in southeastern Wisconsin. "You never know what you're going to find."

Mallet, a media relations specialist for Georgetown University and others, didn't even like "Red Nose" when she first spotted it during one of her frequent Goodwill shopping trips in May.

"The big find that day was this great set of steel knives, in a block, for $18.99" by Wolfgang Puck, she said.

But the graphic black-and-white picture was striking. In low-browed terms, it might be described as an abstract image of an ape with a hangover, with spiral swirls for eyes like the ones in cartoons when someone gets punched. A large red nose is the only color.

Then she saw the Calder signature.

"I thought, I don't know if it's real or not but it's $12.99. I've wasted more on worse things," she said. A discount for using her Goodwill loyalty card brought the price down to $12.34.

Once home, she searched the Internet and found similar lithographs by Calder, who died in 1976 and is widely known for his mobiles and abstract sculptures at airports, office towers and other public places. Mallet's piece was No. 55 of 75 lithographs and was made in 1969.

"This happens very frequently – you can't imagine," the company's owner, Jane Jacob, said of treasures found at thrift stores. "They don't know what they have. They're just not set up to understand art history."

Lauren Lawson-Zilai, a spokeswoman for Goodwill Industries International Inc. in Rockville, Md., gave these examples of art that Goodwill staff spotted and sold through the auction site:

_ In 2009, a painting by Utah artist Maynard Dixon donated in Santa Rosa, Calif., sold for $70,001.

Bryan Fite, a Missouri resident, uncovered a hidden stash of century-old whiskey bottles underneath the floorboards in his attic. Rare bottles of whiskey have sold for as much as $200,000.

Gardeners stumbled across a number of unmarked gold bars, known as "ingots," under a bush while cutting grass in the Swiss of town of Klingnau near the German border. The 10 bars are worth an estimated $126,000.

A Sacramento couple found a 1961 wedding ring between the seats of a car they had just purchased a few months earlier.

A California mom found a meteorite worth more than gold at a local park where she frequently brings her dog and kids.

An unemployed man sold an original Picasso print that he found in a thrift store for $7,000.

An unemployed Illinois man found duffle bags full of cash totaling $150,000 in his backyard.

A man got down on his knees for a second time after he found his wife's engagement ring in a toilet 36 years after she had lost it.

After a family in Salt Lake City found $40,000 in cash in the attic of their recently-purchased home, they returned the money to its rightful owner.

A worker in Idaho returned a diamond ring to its rightful owner after finding the treasure in a sewer. The owner thought she had lost it forever when she accidentally flushed it down the toilet.

Federal Way Quality Control Officer Shea Munroe stumbled upon an etching by famed surrealist painter Salvador Dali at a Goodwill in Tacoma, Wash. The thrift store find would go on to sell for $21,005 in an online auction.

Cheryl Gavazzi was shopping at Marshalls in Beverly, Mass. when a purse caught her eye. But what was inside the purse -- $11,000 in cash -- is what really got her attention. She would hand over the bag to the police, who found the original owner who said the money was being used to build a church in Guatemala.

How's this for a page turner: A Wellesley, Mass. man found $20,000 in cash hidden in the pages of a book he discovered at a used book-swap. The man has asked to remain anonymous but said anyone with info on the books rightful owner could contact him at Ipatimga2005@comcast.net.

An 8-year-old boy named Charlie Naysmith made a strange -- and pricey -- discovery when walking along the Hengistbury Head beach in Great Britain. Thinking he'd stumbled upon a yellow rock, Naysmith had actually found ambergris, a substance barfed or pooped up by sperm whales. The piece is estimated to be worth upwards of $63,000.

Karl Kissner of Toledo, Ohio found a collection of baseball cards in his grandfather's attic that fetched a tremendous sum. The 37 baseball cards featuring the likes of Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Honus Wagner fetched $566,132 during bidding.